Wilton’s Strike! dance festival at London music hall

Posted on June 9, 2014

Wilton’s Music Hall (pictured) has announced Wilton’s Strike!, a new dance festival which offers emerging dance artists the chance to perform on Wilton’s historic stage.

In recent years, dance has had a growing profile at Wilton’s, the late-Victorian music hall in east London. Dance productions at Wilton’s have included Hannah Bruce’s The Look of the Thing, new works by Noel Wallace and a long run of Mark Bruce Company’s Dracula. The theatre has also hosted swing dance nights.

Conceived as a showcase for new work, Wilton’s Strike! is being developed inside the theatre’s Chrysalis Club, the arts wing of the Heritage Lottery Funded-project to repair all of Wilton’s derelict spaces.

Applications are invited for new choreography with the theme of metamorphosis. Shorlisted candidates will receive a £1,500 fee to help develop works to performance level, as well as rehearsal time at Wilton’s. Audiences and critics will be invited to attend and review the final performances, which will also be live-streamed to expose the work to as wide an audience as possible. Applications in all styles and genres are welcome, but the work must be entirely new.

Application forms and submission guidelines are available from the Wilton’s website. The deadline for applications is 5pm on June 23.

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.